PITTSBURGH — Joe Biden joined the 2020 race for president last week by declaring that the next election will be “a battle for the soul of this nation.”
But his decision to make a Western Pennsylvania Teamster hall his first campaign stop on Tuesday shows he truly understands the heart of it.
Although Biden, 76, served in the Senate for 36 years representing Delaware, he spent his childhood in Scranton, Pa., and for most of his political career, he credited his Northeastern Pennsylvania roots for shaping his work ethic and character, often calling himself Pennsylvania’s third senator.
His affinity for the state and the people who live here could be the key to taking the presidency.
“If you’re going to win the White House, you have to win Pennsylvania as a Democrat,” said Rich Fitzgerald, the chief executive and highest ranking Democrat in Allegheny County. “And to win Pennsylvania, you have to win Western Pennsylvania. And you have to do better than we did in 2016 — we lost some of our suburban areas and counties by 40, 50, 60 points.”
In 2016, Hillary Clinton won big in Philadelphia and the surrounding suburban counties, but it wasn’t enough. Why? Because the western rural and Rust Belt counties closer to Pittsburgh, as well as counties that mirrored them culturally, like Luzerne and Northampton, over-performed for Donald Trump, giving a Republican a win in the Keystone State for the first time in three decades.
That moment shifted the political power in this state from the more densely populated east to the more motivated and sprawling west.
That’s why Biden coming to Pittsburgh and making Western Pennsylvania his launch point is so smart, Fitzgerald said.
“It is the perfect place to kick off your race to talk about economic issues, health care, pensions and investing in manufacturing and infrastructure — bread and butter issues that we care about here in Western Pennsylvania and across the Midwest,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Inquirer has reported that Biden is eyeing the City of Brotherly Love for his campaign headquarters. Although Hillary Clinton shares Biden’s Northeastern Pennsylvania roots, she chose to base her campaign HQ in Brooklyn.
Ralph Sicuro, who heads the firefighters union in Pittsburgh, said a lot of his members and their families didn’t develop a good connection with Clinton because of missed opportunities like that.
“She didn’t energize our membership because I don’t think she was relating to them,” Sicuro said.
Local Pennsylvania Democrats have done well here in the past two years post-Trump. The ones who have won statewide, like Sen. Bob Casey and Gov. Tom Wolf, have done so by running on local issues like infrastructure and health care and job creation. Same on the local level where Conor Lamb in Congress and Pam Iovino in the state Senate won as moderate problem-solvers campaigning in big Trump districts.
There was no call to arms for third-trimester abortions, no New Green Deal support that would cripple the booming shale industry, no rallying cry for impeachment and no pledges for Medicare or free college for all.
‘These millennials may come to believe that Biden is not right for the current times.’
Jeff Brauer, a political science professor at Keystone College, said the former vice president’s visit to Pittsburgh is a sign he is the one Democrat who can and will beat Trump in Pennsylvania.
“The concern for Biden will be whether or not he can victoriously make it through the crowded Democratic primary,” Brauer said of a feat Biden has attempted twice before to no avail.
“This time he will have to contend with what he, himself, dubs the ‘New Left’ — Democratic primary voters who have a progressive ideological litmus test for the candidates. While Biden enjoys great popularity within the Democratic Party, his four-decades-long voting record could come back to haunt him — especially with the millennial generation as they examine his past on such issues as school integration, the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill ordeal, the Crime Bill, and the Iraq War,” Brauer said.
“These millennials may come to believe that Biden is not right for the current times,” he said, adding, “If they are successful in pushing the party too far left for a Biden candidacy, Pennsylvanian and Midwestern blue-collar workers may be lost to the Republicans for decades.”
Sicuro knows there will be forces within the party that will try to destroy Biden and it concerns the heck out of him.
“I am beyond worried. I’m very scared. My union members . . . are going to be disgusted with that type of behavior towards Biden. Especially to a man who a vast majority in the labor family hold in high regard.”
A recent Monmouth University poll of Democrats nationwide found that Biden is way ahead of the 19 others running in his party’s field — with 27 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters backing him.
But there are concerns that female voters view Biden negatively, first on his identity as a white male, and second on the allegations that he has inappropriately touched a number of women.
Jackie Mikus, 74, of Presto, Pa., said she is having none of that on either issue.
“I vote for the best candidate, not on identity, and that stuff was blown out of proportion,” said the Democrat who has been immersed in party activism all her life.
Mikus summed up her support for Biden neatly — and it is a sentiment shared by a variety of Western Pennsylvania Democrats longing for a win in 2020.
“He has experience, he was an integral part of the Obama White House, he has presidential conduct, he is right on labor and he can win Western Pennsylvania,” Mikus said. “Win here and you’re the next president. It’s that simple.”